Laughing Ravens

  'Pelican Island' ( Joseph Musacchia , R. 2019)  Not quite the end of Louisiana iris season... but I dont expect many more to open this week. Things have shifted over to the pseudatas and the ensatas. Even the pseudocorus have passed their prime. That's unfortunate this year, because I was hoping to make a few more crosses between the ensatas and Gubijin... but I think the last Gubijin flower might open tomorrow. We'll see.    'Furui Shiro' ( Carol S. Warner , R. 2016) SPEC-X  'Furui Shiro' is one of the tallest pseudatas in the garden. The flowers are easily the largest. Pseudatas are touted as a sterile cross between an ensata (Japanese) iris and a pseudocorus (invasive yellow flag). Leto and I have been checking for pollen on each opening variety of pseudata, just to test this sterility. Sure enough, none of them have pollen in the stamens. In fact, most of the stamens are tiny, misshapen things. It did however make me wonder about the stigma. Hard...

  I thought I might try to write about the way one sees in a garden. Literally and metaphorically. I also want to address the elephant/solar panel in the room: The giant panels that block the primary view of our garden from the road. And then there's the question of who cares? Who is the garden for? For me? For my family? For others? For tours? Or for the frogs and foxes and ravens?   the veggie garden a few years ago   Seeing into the space is a complex concept with some very simple basic issues. Our garden sits adjacent to a rural road, where for the most part, people drive by as quickly as they can. Other than the spot that our house occupies (close to the road) and the driveway, the rest of the visible part of our property is our fenced in garden. Everything surrounding that perimeter is essentially wooded or at the very least a line of trees. All of our neighbors are within a few hundred feet. Across the road from us is a forty acre field, rented out for farming and ...

  This year's iris seedlings have reached the point where it is time to move them from the seedling trays and into the new beds. Last year, we planted them far too close. As a result, this spring it was apparent that they were so close it was going to be difficult to distinguish one plant from another. Some irises were easy enough to lift early in the spring, while we were getting rain nearly every day. Other irises will just have to wait a few more weeks to be moved. Normally, I would wait until late summer to move an iris... but this year we need the bed space. For some of the larger irises, there might be some transplant shock. I plan on moving them right before a long rain, but that's never a guarantee. One of the other things I anticipate making use of this year: Miracle-Gro Quick Start (4-12-4). I started using it on my seedlings last year as a way to help build strong roots mid-summer.    One of the things we discovered last winter/early this spring is that critter...

iris versicolor (not sure which SIGNA seedling) iris brevicaulis, donated by a friend in Michigan 'Byakuya No Kuni' ( Hiroshi Shimizu by Carol Warner, R. 2005)  'Labrador Hollow' - ( Joseph Musacchia , R. 2017) 'Mama Janice' ( Joseph Musacchia , R. 2019) 'Percy Viosca' ( Patrick O'Connor , R. 2014) 'Annette Brown' ( Harry Wolford , R. 2013). 'Brown Recluse' ( Walter Moores , R. 2011) first year bloom, species iris ensata, from seed from SIGNA.org 'Acadian Sky' - ( Joseph Musacchia , R. 2017)    The weather has transitioned from over a month of nearly daily rain (42 days in two months) to suddenly being humid and oppressively hot. Dangerous heat warnings started this weekend. Stepping out the door this morning, I was met with the same wall of hot/wet that I associate with getting off the plane in Miami.  Part of that transition is the change in iris season: from Siberian iris season (with iris versicolor sprinkled in fo...

  There are some evenings where I keep going long after I should have gone inside for the night. Sometimes it is because I went back out to the garden after dinner. Tonight, there were a lot of perennials and shrubs I wanted to get into the new beds in front of the solar panel, before the rain starts. We're expecting to get rain off-and-on for the next three days, followed by a jump in temperature into the high 80's. Considering that this week has struggled to get to 70F, that will be quite the shock to newly transplanted plants. Getting them into the chips, surrounded by coarse compost, and watered in... that makes the transition so much better. Tonight, the solar lights that dot the garden came on not long after the sky yellowed, then darkened. As the little lights started popping on, and swaying gently in the last breezes of the day... I realized that it was probably time to head inside. I still needed to get everything watered in, which of course made it absolutely dark as ...

  Sure, I could complain about the endless rain we have had since April. I could also blame my day-job and my supervisor for sucking all the life out of me. Heck, I could even blame my congestive heart failure... any one of these things would make life a drag. But lately... I have had zero motivation to write. Even less motivation to cook. And barely enough motivation (or dry shoes) to work in the garden. For a moment, suspend disbelief that it has rained at least part of nearly every day since the last week of April. We aren't building an ark, but the frogs have requested life jackets. We have had a few days where the sun appeared, but then it rained. Mowing the lawn has caused rooster-tails of water to shoot out from our mower. Getting stuck in the muck is a very real possibility. Why mention this: Because I tend to not take a lot of photos when it's raining.  Additionally: if it's dry, I really want to take advantage of that dry-time to get stuff done. That said, here...